Wollongong IT companies could take advantage of opportunities in Silicon Valley and still remain in the Illawarra, NSW Trade and Investment Commissioner to the United States Jason Seed said yesterday.
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Mr Seed spoke to IT industry representatives at the University of Wollongong's Innovation Campus after learning more about the iAccelerate business accelerator initiative and touring the StartPad incubator.
During a lunch jointly hosted by NSW Trade and Investment and ICT Illawarra, he spoke with representatives of several established businesses, including Gerringong-based Planet Footprint, which provides a cloud-based energy and environmental scorekeeping service to 25 corporate and government clients in 15 US states.
"We do all the technology and data processing and everything over here," director Dean Jackson said.
"We are probably growing at about 10 to 20 per cent per year."
Mr Seed was already familiar with Grabble founders Stuart Argue and Anthony Marcar who have sold the company they started in Wollongong in 2010 to US supermarket giant WalMart.
Mr Seed is also working with Geoff McQueen, of Hiive Systems, who moved to California after his AffinityLive product attracted interest in Silicon Valley.
"Geoff and I are collaborating on a couple of programs with some of the larger media brands over there like TechCrunch, who run one of the big conferences that he is involved with," Mr Seed said.
"I am working with him to try and get an Australian pavilion so we can showcase some of the companies coming over."
Mr Seed said Australian companies worth $10 million had opportunities to source venture capital that could take them up to the $100 million level.
He said Americans saw Australian tech companies as innovative but only really thought of Sydney, which could be of benefit to the Illawarra.
"Wollongong is also a very good representation of what is actually happening in Silicon Valley where there are a lot of corporates trying to get together with the university, with start-ups and with venture capital to create little ecosystems," he said.
Mr Seed was impressed with four start-ups he saw at StartPad.
"Glenn Farrant's start-up [which has developed a mobile alert safety solution for tertiary education campuses] is a really exciting one and I have already given him some feedback on how he can present his company to really show the bigger vision.
"When you have got a great product like that and the technology, skill-set and team, what you then need to focus on is the business model."
